Object details
Accession number
S.G.Sar.1.1.1.6
Primary Creator
James McNeill Whistler
(Lowell, Massachusetts, 1834 - 1903, London, England)
Full title
First Venice Set: The Riva
Creation Date
1880
State
unknown state of IV
Provenance
Possibly in the collection of the surgeon and etcher Francis Seymour Haden (1818-1910), by 1890.
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the art dealers H. Wunderlich & Co., New York on 11 April 1890 for $750. (as part of "Whistler's two sets of Venice etchings")
Marks
Signed in pencil (on tab): Whistler's butterfly signature [dated 1886]
Inscribed (on tab): "imp." [hand of Whistler]
Dimensions
19.9 x 295 cm (7 13/16 x 116 1/8 in.)
Display Media
Etching and drypoint printed on laid paper
Web Commentary
Isabella Stewart Gardner kept meticulous records of many of her acquisitions. In keeping with this legacy, object information is continually being reviewed, updated, and enriched in order to give greater access to the collection.
Permanent Gallery Location
Short Gallery
Bibliography
The Fine Art Society. Mr. Whistler's Etchings (London, 1883), no. 30.
Frederick Wedmore. Whistler's Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue (London, 1886), pp. 68-69, no. 157.
James McNeill Whistler. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (London, 1890), p. 99.
Howard Mansfield. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler (Chicago, 1909), p. 124, no. 189.
Edward G. Kennedy. The Etched Work of Whistler (New York, 1910), pp. 75-76, no. 192.
From Realism to Symbolism: Whistler and His World. Exh. cat. (New York: Wildenstein; Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1971), p. 51, no. 34, pl. 45.
Katharine A. Lochnan. The Etchings of James McNeill Whistler. Exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984; Toronto: The Art Gallery of Ontario, 1985), pp. 182, 214, 219, 281, no. 203.
Margaret F. MacDonald. James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours, a Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 1995), pp. 314-15, no. 836r.
Carole McNamara and John Siewert. Whistler: Prosaic Views, Poetic Vision. Exh. cat. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1996), pp. 92-93, no. 34.
Alastair Grieve. Whistler's Venice (New Haven, 2000), pp. 32, 107, 109, 189, fig. 124.
Margaret F. MacDonald. Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice (Berkeley, 2001), pp. 69, 88, 94, 120, 128, pl. 5.
Erica Hirshler. "Sargent's Fountain of Youth" in Elizabeth Anne McCauley et al. Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Venice: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, 2004), p. 156, 158, fig. 111.
Margaret F. MacDonald et al. "The Riva." James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné (University of Glasgow, 2012), no. 229, accessed 16 May 2016. http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk/catalogue/
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